Reclaiming the fit, healthy body I once had. With a little knitting on the side.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The Great and Powerful O

I don't usually watch Oprah. I don't usually watch daytime television, actually, other than a random news check or a daytime baseball game. But I happened to catch yesterday's show. I can't really write about it. Dr. Robin was talking about how our mothers try to 'fix' what was broken in their lives, only to make it worse. I lost it when one of the mothers said she told her daughter how special and beautiful she was, because she'd never been told that. And then lost it again when the beautiful 19-year-old model described how ugly she felt she was.

The Spousal Equivalent was home and was shocked that I would identify and react so strongly to these women. I knew exactly how each of them felt. Exactly. And I said to him that, as an only child surrounded and raised by an extended, loving, supportive family, of course he didn't understand why I was so touched.

He said he had felt ugly for a couple of years because of something someone said, probably in late grade school or middle school. [We used to call it junior high.] A couple of years.

Women carry those ugly feelings around for their whole lives. At least I have.

I'm still processing all of this. In one way I feel completely narcissistic and vain, even thinking about how I look. Just about everything I read or watch, though, reinforces that women should be thin and pretty in order to be accepted and loved. In another way, I want to someday just get over it, already, and quit thinking about it at all.